Biography & Memoirs > Historical Biographies

This little book is just a taste of Amboy’s yesteryears. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive history lesson or even a complete listing of eye-witness happenings. It’s the voices of people who lived in and around Amboy through the century; it’s a collective history, with some folklore mixed in.

Thank you for sharing your stories and your voices in this tribute to all who have come and gone before us. We honor you. We give thanks to our gracious Father for all the provision along the way. His examples of faithfulness and truth have been the guide to many pioneers on the Prairie and beyond. May He continue to be our guide.

The names of many of the characters in the story are the neighbors and shirttail relatives I knew or heard about from my mother and her siblings. Some characters are real with fictitious names; some characters are fictitious with names of real people. I played with Sandra Rae and Mickey Wells, and Barbara Ann Bennington. Wendell Patterson took me for a short ride on his two-wheeler bicycle when I was four. Lucille Patterson Mauk was my mom’s best friend since early childhood. They attended the Woodland School and McKell High School. Our family attended the Brick Union Christian Church. James Douglas White is a friend from college. He was my orchestra director and classical violinist ...

This is the story of my grandfather, who was the legendary "gangster" of his small community outside of Ripley Tennessee, about 50 miles north of Memphis.

My grandfather, Otis L. Linn, used a small pocket notebook in the spring and summer of 1919 to record daily information of his activities, observations, and thoughts in the days and weeks before he embarked onboard an Army Transportation Service troop ship from Marseilles to New York City by way of Gibraltar and the Azores. The notebook means less by itself than as a supplement to the book of Otis's letters to his family from October 1918 to July 1919. The letters have been published in book form as The Letters of Otis L. Linn With the Y.M.C.A. in France Serving the American Expeditionary Force 1918 & 1919. This book is also available from The Book Patch bookstore.

This book contains the biographies and stories of Wabash College members of the Class of 1970. We shared formative years together and met in September 2021 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our graduation in 1970. Dedicated to Dean Norman Moore. Ron